How and When to Boost a Facebook Post

So you got your business onto Facebook, and you’re posting worthy content. The ball is rolling, followers sporadically pour in and you’re getting your views and likes. Everything seems fine. Yet, it seems like the results of the efforts you put in are very limited. People aren’t sharing your posts enough. The word isn’t getting out much beyond your fan base. The organic growth is slow. You want to reach a wider audience. You want to convert more uninitiated Facebookers into followers. Luckily for you, Facebook has you covered. Say hello to the “boost” feature. Boosting a post on Facebook means paying to get your content seen by more people. But since it’s a feature you’re paying for, you best be doing it right. Which posts to boost and which ones to not? Here, in this post, we’ll help you understand how and when to boost a Facebook post.

Benefits of boosting a post:

Facebook themselves have admitted that the organic reach for businesses is declining. In other words, the number of people your posts can reach is falling. Facebook’s goal here is to fill news feeds with content from friends and family, rather than businesses. Either that or they just want brands to cough up more for this free marketing platform that they provide. Either way, the solution is boosting. When you boost a post, you’re tapping into the opportunity of having many interested people see the post and be moved by it in favor of your business. It’s the difference of shouting out your message in your street and shouting out the same message in multiple busy streets at the same time, for a small amount.

With boosts, you’ll be able to reach a much wider audience as you aren’t limited to people who already subscribe to your page, and the best part is that it can be very highly targeted. You’ll be able to set very specific parameters for the types of people who will see your post. For example, you can aim your net towards 25-30-year-old men from Bangalore, India, who studied at St. Josephs College and listen to Metallica. Not that you have to get that specific, but you can if you wanted to.

It’s easy to use. Once your desired post to be boosted is reviewed by Facebook, it goes live almost instantly, and you can manage it. You can end its boost whenever you want if you want to choose another post to be boosted instead. Thanks to Facebook Insights, you’ll get a detailed summary of the performance of your boosted posts. You have the option to see its progress in terms of reach, clicks, reactions, comments, and shares.

How to boost a Facebook post?

Boosting a post is very easy to do and available for any post on your page’s timeline. All you need to do is click “Boost Post” in the lower right corner of your post.

When you click it, you have the option to choose either pushing the post to “People you choose through targeting.”, “People who like your page”, or “People who like your page and their friends”.

One problem with choosing the third option is that your fans’ friends may not be interested in your business and you may be wasting your money by pushing your post out to them. If your goal is to drive some targeted traffic to your website, then choose the second option.

The targeting option lets you select which people you want to reach, as well as their location, age, gender and up to 10 interests. When you choose a targeted boosted post, it’s typically to drive traffic to your website (where you have a strong call to action or purpose). Even though you’re sending people away from Facebook, you’ll still pay for the engagement on the post (likes, comments, etc.)

When you’ve set your audience and budget, you can click “More Options” and choose whether you want to spread the budget out over a few days (with a maximum of 7 days) and/or change the account that’s being charged. When you boost a post, the ad results show up in your Facebook Ads Manager. From there you can monitor the ad, run more detailed reports and watch the performance.

When to boost a Facebook post?

When it comes to the timing of boosting a post, it is a best practice to boost the post after it has had a chance to show up organically in your follower’s newsfeeds. You definitely want to capitalize on the organic traction you can gather before boosting a post.  To make sure you are capitalizing on this, wait a few hours and then that’s when to boost a facebook post.

Another thing to keep in mind is to limit the number of posts you boost. Overdoing it and appearing too often in people’s news feeds will make you blend in and could cause users to skim right over your posts as they scroll through their news feeds. A worst-case scenario would be someone hiding your post, which will deter Facebook from showing your message to them again. Depending on how much original and compelling content you have to promote, your best bet is to boost a post once a week.

However, if you have a well-performing post with you, and you think you it would be beneficial to you if seen by more people, then go ahead, by all means, boost it. Give the post a bigger audience. Make sure the post is boost-worthy though. The main thing to keep in mind about when to boost a Facebook post is noticing if the post is capable of gaining momentum with that little push. That’s what boosting ultimately is, a small push. Kind of like how a mama bird pushes its young one off the nest to make them learn how to fly, make sure your post learns to fly and not be a total waste that comes crashing to the ground.

Choose well.